1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an improvement in a photographic processing apparatus, and more particularly to an improved photographic processing apparatus, in which a long photographic paper or sheet in a roll form is charged in a printer on one side thereof and then paid out intermittently for printing when the sheet is stopped; the printed sheet is then cut to a size corresponding to one frame of a film; the printed sheets thus cut are intermittently fed from the printer to an automatic sheet-distributing portion or assembly of the apparatus one by one; cut sheets received in the automatic sheet-distributing portion are delivered in rows of two or more to a sheet-feeding device and then to an automatic developing portion or assembly of the apparatus, which includes a series of treatment tubs to be used in common for the cut sheets fed in parallel in rows two or more, and sheet-conveying members of a given size and configuration and of the same number as that of the sheets fed in parallel, which members run through the series of the treatment tubs.
In addition, in the case of a large size photographic paper or sheet, which has been printed in another printer or in an enlarging device, is directly fed to a sheet-feeding device in the automatic sheet-distributing portion and then to the automatic developing portion, wherein the large size photographic sheet is developed by means of the aforesaid sheet-conveying members, which cooperate with each other.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the initial phase of progress of an automatic photographic processing apparatus, a long photographic paper or sheet in a roll form is charged in a printer on one side thereof, and the sheet is paid out intermittently for printing when the sheet is stopped. The long photographic sheet thus printed is then taken up into a roll form in the printer on the other side thereof and, is then charged in the upstream end of an automatic developing device including a roller conveying system, and then the roll sheet is paid out for development. However, according to this apparatus, a defective printed portion of a long run of photographic sheet can not be found, until a whole run of the photographic sheet is developed, thus providing considerable disadvantage in re-printing process for a defective printed sheet portion.
To cope with this, there has been proposed an attempt in which a long photographic sheet is not taken up into a roll form, but is cut to a size corresponding to a frame of a film, and then the cut printed sheets are delivered out one by one. The printer is so designed as to cooperate with the roller-conveying, automatic developing device. The photographic sheets thus cut are developed one by one, separately. This system is utilized as so-called quick printing and developing process in a shop, so that a customer may receive pictures in 10 to 20 minutes after placing an order. However, this system suffers from disadvantage in that an automatic developing device takes an excessively long time, as compared with the printing time, i.e., poor efficiency of the development.
To avoid the above shortcoming, there has been proposed another attempt by the inventor, that a long photographic paper or sheet in a roll form is charged in a printing portion on one side thereof; the sheet is then paid out intermittently for printing, when the sheet is stopped; the sheet is then cut to size corresponding to a frame of a film; and the sheets thus cut are fed to several automatic developing devices arranged in parallel for the simultaneous development of several printed sheets, thereby accelerating the developing operation of the printed sheets. In this connection, an automatic sheet-distributing device for feeding sheets in two or more rows in parallel has been developed, and a patent application has been filed with the Japanese Patent Office. This attempt well meets the requirement for quick processing of E size or F size, or small size photographic sheets (E size . . . about 82.5 .times. 114 mm, F. size . . . about 76 .times. 118 mm). However, this attempt still suffers from a shortcoming in that a large size photographic sheet has to be developed in another developing device (large size . . . about 252 .times. 303 mm).